A LITTLE SPOTTER’S GUIDE TO
LADYBIRD
BOOKS
FOR OUR YOUNGER VISITORS
THIS IS A LITTLE BOOK ALL ABOUT BOOKS! My name is...................................... I am ............... years old My favourite book is........................ .......................................................... My favourite place to read is........... ...........................................................
Draw yourself here! Hello! See if you can find me hiding somewhere on every page of this book!
OUR EXHIBITION IS ALL ABOUT LADYBIRD BOOKS
Look at all the different Ladybird book titles! Can you see adventure stories, history books, books about countries, jobs, animals, sport, the weather, space? Let’s find out what made Ladybird books so special...
In 1867...
a man called Henry Wills opened a bookshop in Loughborough, a town right in the middle of England.
This is an old photo of the marketplace in Loughbrough.
Henry’s shop was here
Henry had a friend called William Hepworth, who was a printer. William joined Henry, and they called their company Wills & Hepworth.
My shop sign
E P H W & O R S L TH IL W If you had a shop, what would you call it? What would it sell? Where would it be? Draw your shop sign here It could be your own name... or maybe you would go into business with a friend?
MARKET PLACE LOUGHBOROUGH
Wills & Hepworth spent most of their time printing catalogues for knitwear and shoe makers. Paper was rationed during the Second World War and there was less printing work for the company to do. So to keep everyone busy and to keep the company going, they started to create children’s books. These were the first Ladybird books. A whole book was designed to be printed on one large sheet of paper, and then cut and folded to make the pages in the book. That was a very clever idea! The early Ladybird books were made in lots of different styles and sizes. You can see from the pictures on this page how different they are from one another.
But it was a man called Douglas Keen who transformed Ladybird books into the famous children’s books we know today.
Douglas Keen joined the company in 1936. He loved nature, and he thought that Ladybird could make educational books for children. His wife - Margaret - and his wife’s mother (also called Margaret!) were both good artists. With their help, Douglas made a big ‘dummy’ book, rather like a scrap book. He showed it to the directors of the company. It had beautiful pictures and clear, easy to read words. It looked a bit like this:
Robin It worked! The directors loved the idea of the book! ‘British Birds and their Nests’ was published in 1953 and became Ladybird’s first nature book.
nests and eggs
Draw some eggs or baby birds in this nest!
Douglas Keen could never have imagined what an incredible impact his idea would have on Ladybird books. In 1946, Ladybird sold 24 thousand books. In 1974, when Douglas retired, Ladybird were selling 24 million books a year!
A QUICK PAUSE FOR A PUZZLE Have you been spotting the little ladybird on each page? Now help these ladybirds find their way into and out of the mazes! IN
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IN H E
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THE BRILLIANT LADYBIRD ARTISTS Artwork was very important in Ladybird books. Douglas Keen asked only the finest and most skilled artists to paint pictures for the books. One of the most famous Ladybird book artists was Charles Tunnicliffe. He was very wellknown as a nature artist, and Douglas asked him to create a series of Ladybird books all about the countryside. This is one of his pictures on the opposite page.
s ’ e f f i l c i n n u T s e l r a h C s i y h W ? l a i c e p s o s d o o W h c e e B f o picture You can tell that a great deal of work has gone into it. Charles has put as much care and thought into the painting as he might put into any of his more famous pictures.
The scene is very realistic, and there is so much going on! Look at all the different kinds of birds, plants and animals. There are tall, slender beech trees with grey trunks, and the rusty orange leaves stand out beautifully against the pale blue sky.
Notice the angle that the artist has chosen to paint the picture from. It’s as if we are seeing it through the eyes of a woodland creature such as a fox, who has emerged from the wood and come across this lovely scene. Wood pigeons take to the sky, as if they were suddenly startled. The pheasant wonders whether to run for cover. You can almost smell the earth and breathe in the freshness of the air. It makes us want to go out into the countryside and explore.
Douglas Keen was also a very good salseman. To display Ladybird books, he made little scenes for bookshops with pictures of animals, or nature tables. They looked beautiful in the shop windows and everybody stopped to admire them - and buy the books!
MAKE A NATURE TABLE AT HOME
p
heck w
wn u ro
You could collect rocks, leaves, shells, pine cones and flowers. Add a magnifying glass, if you have one, so that people can look at the items. Nature books or labels can help to identify things. Collect glass jars to show small objects, or display them on pieces of wood. You could make different nature tables to show the changing seasons. Be careful a h g t i Don’t pick up anything sharp or broken that could cut you Don’t ever take eggs from birds’ nests Make sure things are clean enough to bring indoors
c
The original ladybird book logo was a black and white hand-drawn flying ladybird. In the 1960s, the logo changed to the familiar non-flying spotty red bug. The design was based on a real ladybird, chosen by Douglas Keen from specimens at the Natural History Museum.
LET’S DRAW A LADYBIRD
Follow the steps and draw your ladybird here
THE LADYBIRD STORY CONTINUES... More and more artists and writers joined Ladybird books. Douglas Keen was very good at spotting exactly what he needed. Ladybird artists were always superb, paying attention to the finest detail, and the writers were always experts.
In 1956 the Ladybird history series was launched, full of heroes, adventures and battle scenes. Books to teach children how to read appeared in 1964, and were used in thousands of schools. An artist called Frank Hampson was wellknown for his comic book characters, such as Dan Dare. Douglas invited him to create pictures for Ladybird’s ‘Nursery Rhymes’ series. See if you can find Three Blind Mice in the Third Book of Nursery Rhymes. Hampson painted the mice from a curious angle to make them look giant-sized!
Eric Winter illustrated the ‘Well Loved Tales’ fairytale series, creating some seriously scary villains such as the wolf in Red Riding Hood, the witch in Rapunzel, and Rumplestiltskin.
Ladybird books made stories enchanting, they made history dramatic and they made nature feel exciting and wonderful. Grown-ups loved them too, and learned many things from them.
Ladybird books were everywhere! In 1971, Wills & Hepworth finally changed the company name to Ladybird Books, due to the huge success of the books.
LADYBIRD MAGIC TRICKS One of Ladybird’s most popular books in the 1970s was all about tricks and magic. Here are two tricks from the book for you to try! Place 6 coins or counters in this postion. Now, turn the two rows into a circle of coins. BUT you can ONLY move 3 coins!
Take a scarf or long piece of fabric. Can you tie a knot in the scarf WITHOUT letting go of the ends?
If you need the answers, they are on the last page!
AS YOU LOOK AROUND THE EXHIBITION, HERE ARE SOME THINGS YOU MIGHT LIKE TO THINK OR TALK ABOUT....
Ladybird books were very cheap so that children could spend their pocket money on a new book every week. If you had some money each week, would you buy a book?
Look at the way that Ladybird books show everyday life. The sun is shining, the people are smiling and helpful... do Ladybird books look like real life?
What do you notice about the special arrangement of words and pictures in Ladybird books? Why do you think they all have the same pattern?
Do you like the toys illustrated in Ladybird books? Do you think that modern toys are more interesting or better? Perhaps you have some of the older toys too?
Most of these Ladybird books were written between 50 and 70 years ago and some are even older. How are old books different to new ones?
What is your favourite thing in the exhibition? What surprised you? What did you like the least? What will you remember?
TRICK STARTING PATTERN
MOVE ONE
MOVE TWO
MOVE THREE
SCA
COIN
MAGIC TRICK ANSWERS
RICK T RF
This is super-simple! Just fold your arms, pick up the ends of the scarf, and then unfold your arms. You have a knotted scarf without letting go of the ends!
ARE YOU SEEING SPOTS BEFORE YOUR EYES? This is an optical illusion. There are NO black spots on this grid honestly! They are all white!
A LITTLE SPACE FOR DRAWING & DOODLING
This in-house publication has been designed for younger visitors to accompany The Wonderful World of the Ladybird Book Artists at Stapleford Granary, January - March 2026. Booklet author & design by Kate Romano for The Association for Cultural Exchange Collection owned and curated by Helen Day Photographs and images on pages 2, 4, and 8 supplied by Helen Day used for noncommercial educational purposes. Page 2: Selection of Ladybird books Page 4: Selection of Ladybird books Page 8: Beech Wood by Charles Tunnicliffe